Travis Tygart says 'grey area' - using legal drugs when athlete doesn't have medical need for them - is next doping frontier

Yup. It is about time to squash team AlSal. . . . . . Rupp has the greatest pain threshold of any Olympic athlete of ever. Sure — 100 advil per day should make that work.

TUEs are made to be exploited.

Asthma + ADHD pls wrote:

TUEs are made to be exploited.

Hi Ivan, we all know your Russian Sharapova was banned for Meldonium, but didn't CAS list the laundry list of "legal drugs" she was taking too? Quite an impressive.

If Rupp had a high threshold for pain he wouldn’t need to be the most medicated person in the entire sport.

This has become common practice. In tennis, for example, there are an astonishing number of players who claim an asthmatic condition. Inhalers are a stimulant. Asthmatics - genuine asthmatics - generally have very poor "wind". You wouldn't think that was a problem for elite athletes. A lot of cyclists use them also.

As an alternative to faux medical conditions - elite athletes are remarkably sickly nowadays - is the practise of claiming an "injury" that requires an otherwise banned substance - growth hormone, for example - for which a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) is obtained from the governing sporting bodies by the athlete's doctor. Tennis is rife with these. (In the 2017 Australian Open, for example, 3 of the 4 finalists had used them. The one exception was Federer. When Sharapova was caught she was taking a product called meldonium, which is for weak hearts - weak hearts, in a pro tennis player? - which had recently been put on the proscribed list. She could have obtained a TUE but her team slipped up.)

All this is legal - which is the point - but it is doping nevertheless.

Wait, growth hormone can be legal if the athlete has a TUE for it? Is that accurate?

Fiwkfkcd wrote:

Wait, growth hormone can be legal if the athlete has a TUE for it? Is that accurate?

I don't know. Let me go ask a pre-teen USA runner (exposed by Fancy Bears) who happens to be in a sufficiently low percentile for size his age.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Sharapova could have obtained a TUE but her team slipped up.)

Unlike Westerners, Russians prefer to be philosophically opposed to TUE drug cheating. Her team didn't "slip up", her agent didn't read the new rules and relay to her. Even now, she doesn't have a meldonium TUE, no? So she suffers her pressing heart malady, just to be able to play tennis professionally under WADA drug rules, and going beyond even. But when the "rules" are more equal for some others, everyone loses. Westerners even corrupt the science behind, meldonium is not known to be "performance enhancing" outside their theories, while Scandinavians twist the science to allow their asthma TUEs. To say nothing of USA and the modern ADHD theory.

Come on rojo, using "legal" drugs w/o medical need is as old as you can imagine. Just to choose one post... RE: WADA Hacked: Leaked Drug Tests/TUEs - Real or Not? 9/13/2016 3:09PM (Clerk)

There was some tennis chick who tried to get a testosterone(-like) TUE approved, and it actually went through the dodgy doctor stage before a higher-up caught it (I guess she wasn't a big enough publicity name, and lacked a direct-dial to the tennis boss).

.....-----00003 wrote:

There was some tennis chick who tried to get a testosterone(-like) TUE approved, and it actually went through the dodgy doctor stage before a higher-up caught it (I guess she wasn't a big enough publicity name, and lacked a direct-dial to the tennis boss).

That was Mattek-Sands who got a TUE for DHEA, which is a pretty notable steroid, but as noted WADA stepped in and it went to CAS who quashed it.

Rojo, I am disappointed that you would post a title like this knowing the things you know. It is not the "Next" thing, it is "THE" thing for countries with out of competition testing that is somewhat independent and not corrupt. Those countries without OOC testing and corrupt ADA groups just outright dope. The rest of the world plays the TUE game.

While the rolling comes around wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Sharapova could have obtained a TUE but her team slipped up.)

Unlike Westerners, Russians prefer to be philosophically opposed to TUE drug cheating. Her team didn't "slip up", her agent didn't read the new rules and relay to her. Even now, she doesn't have a meldonium TUE, no? So she suffers her pressing heart malady, just to be able to play tennis professionally under WADA drug rules, and going beyond even. But when the "rules" are more equal for some others, everyone loses. Westerners even corrupt the science behind, meldonium is not known to be "performance enhancing" outside their theories, while Scandinavians twist the science to allow their asthma TUEs. To say nothing of USA and the modern ADHD theory.

Welcome from Russia. What a complete load of bs.

Yes, it can wrote:

Fiwkfkcd wrote:

Wait, growth hormone can be legal if the athlete has a TUE for it? Is that accurate?

I don't know. Let me go ask a pre-teen USA runner (exposed by Fancy Bears) who happens to be in a sufficiently low percentile for size his age.

Growth hormone can be part of PRP treatment for knee injuries, for example. Coincidentally helps to build muscle. Very useful, that.

TT knows what he's talking about. Everyone on Jerry's group is on thyroid meds.

In the known wrote:

TT knows what he's talking about. Everyone on Jerry's group is on thyroid meds.

Please elaborate

Armstronglivs wrote:

While the rolling comes around wrote:

Unlike Westerners, Russians prefer to be philosophically opposed to TUE drug cheating. Her team didn't "slip up", her agent didn't read the new rules and relay to her. Even now, she doesn't have a meldonium TUE, no? So she suffers her pressing heart malady, just to be able to play tennis professionally under WADA drug rules, and going beyond even. But when the "rules" are more equal for some others, everyone loses. Westerners even corrupt the science behind, meldonium is not known to be "performance enhancing" outside their theories, while Scandinavians twist the science to allow their asthma TUEs. To say nothing of USA and the modern ADHD theory.

Welcome from Russia. What a complete load of bs.

That's Ivan. His supervisor at the troll farm has assigned him to letsrun. Later Vladimir will be joining in as well, but he's the night shift guy. Ivan and Vlad are top trolls; unkie Putin is going to be giving them new Adidas track suits for Christmas as well as an hour with the best "squat photographer" in Moscow.

If you haven't yet subscribed to harm reduction strategies instead of this 'war on drugs' approach, this should be the tipping point for you. The problems with enforcement of grey areas would dwarf today's enforcement issues, let along that the war on drugs paradigm hasn't yet worked anywhere, in any sector.

This clearly shows that Tygart could not find any evidence of NOP with drug use that violates any laws.

Tygart will never release his findings as it would be be major embarrassment for him and his team of the time and money wasted in their investigation.

Now he will attempt to change the goal posts as to give credibility to his work.

The next extension of this then will be supplements , energy drinks, power bars etc.

BTW, The Daily Mail has been widely criticized for its unreliability as well as printing sensational and inaccurate scare stories of science and medical research and for copyright violations. (Wikipedia)

LetsRun may fall into this category.

The most ironic part about this is that WADA posts a monitoring list every year with drugs that they are currently testing to potentially make illegal for the following year. These drugs have been shown to show performance enhancement potential but haven’t been fully tested to make conclusive evidence to ban them. Another factor in causing the substances to be prohibited is the prevalence.

Essentially WADA is giving people a list of gray area drugs, and when they are listed to be prohibited the following year (usually announced on October 1st) an athlete can just stop taking it to avoid being punished.

Regarding that point about how prevalence also is a point for WADA to prohibit a drug plays to the idea that there are drugs that are performance-enhancing but are not banned. This creates even more grey area.